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Yes, that’s right. A decade after I last worked on it, I am rebooting The Youth of the Dark Lord. For those of you who don’t know about it, this was a side project I started shortly after Lemma, set in the same world but MUCH darker. My Patrons decided that, when I finished Lemma, this should take its place, and so here is the (new) first chapter.
Even at a young age, people were
already predicting that Tyryn would come to a bad end. It was his mother, with
her wildfire hair and poison-green eyes, always skulking around the edges of
the village, muttering. People said she had the evil eye, that she was a witch,
and perhaps she was.
Certainly she taught Tyryn things
that no child should know. His mother was midwife to half the women in the village–the
poorer half–and as soon as he could walk, she had him fetching and carrying.
He ran errands for her when he was a little older, and all the village found
him eerie.
He had his mother’s hair and eye
color–shocking red and poison green–but those were common enough in that part
of Yr. It was something else about him that bothered people, just as it was
something else about his mother. With her it was a wild strangeness, a sense
that at any moment she might do–well, anything.
But with Tyryn, it was the opposite.
His mother’s hair was a tangle of matted curls; his was straight and short and
neat. He was always still, always watching, always cold. He scared people more
than his mother did.
And scared people, especially scared
children, turn cruel.
Tyryn’s main tormentor was an older
boy named Lyr. Lyr would taunt Tyryn, mock him, his mother, his unknown
father, and when that failed to provoke a reaction, he would beat the
smaller boy. Until the thing that happened in the barn.
No one, save Tyryn and perhaps
Lyr, knew what exactly transpired. Lyr and his friends encountered Tyryn
in the road; Tyryn fled; Lyr chased. Tyryn hid in the barn; Lyr entered in
pursuit.
A few minutes later Lyr left
the barn, ashen-faced and shaken. After that, he left Tyryn alone, though
he would blanch at sight or mention of the smaller boy. After that, the
others left Tyryn alone, too. Fear can make people cruel, but it can make
them cower, too. That was an important lesson in the young Tyryn’s life.
When the traveling healer arrived,
he soon heard about Tyryn. Against the warnings of all the townsfolk, he sought
the boy and his mother out.
The traveler was small, pale,
brown-haired and -eyed, though there were touches of gray at his temples.
No one like him had ever been seen in this remote village, but nonetheless
it was known what his build and coloration meant: a Lemurian. Something
more mysterious and nearly as frightful as Tyryn and his mother.
She was not cowed, however. She met her guest with all the
grace and aplomb that could be mustered in a filthy, decaying shack on the
edge of the forest. He sat at her table–a sawed-off log, really–and
looked about the tiny room that was the entire interior of her shack and the
sum total of her worldly possessions.
“I wish to buy the boy,”
he said.
Tyryn lurked in the corner,
impassive, sullen.
“For what?” asked his
mother.
“He is about the same age as my
daughter,” said the healer. “She could use a playmate, and I an
apprentice.”
The witch scoffed. “Him?
He would as like eat your child as play with her. He is a wicked child,
wicked to the core, like his father.”
The healer squatted down near
Tyryn. “I am named Vilnus,” he said, ignoring Tyryn’s mother.
“Tell me, Tyryn, why do you work so hard to hide how you feel? Is it
because things happen when you yell, or cry?”
Tyryn’s eyes widened in momentary
shock and alarm. He knows! The stranger knows! He fought down the
incipient panic.
“Power,” said Vilnus,
straightening up and facing the mother. “He is filled with it, raw
potential such as I have rarely seen. Left to his own devices, he would grow
wild, wilder even than you, and bring chaos and ruin upon this village.
But taught properly, to channel and control his gifts… There is
potential for greatness in him.”
“Greatness, eh?” said the
witch, a touch of greed lighting in her eyes.
“Indeed,” said Vilnus.
“I will of course pay a reasonable price.”
The woman shook her head.
“If I suddenly showed in the market with gold or silver, they would
burn my house and rob me in an hour. No deal."
"My dear lady, I would not
insult you like that! No, what I wish to purchase from you is power, and
what I offer in return… is power.”
Her eyes flashed again. “I’m
listening.”
Vilnus drew a slim volume from
his robes and laid it on the table. “I offer you this,” he said.
“The power of illusion. The power to beguile the senses, to shape
what others see and perceive… To use as you will.”
She scoffed. “What good is that
to me? I feel its power, but it is like yours, thin and pale and stiff.
And besides, I lack the knack for reading, and this village lacks
teachers.”
“It wouldn’t be in a language
you know, anyway,” said Vilnus. “But it could be of use to you
nonetheless. Open it and see.”
The woman shrugged and opened
the book to a random page. The diagram before her shifted and shimmered before
settling into a complex pattern of colored curves. “Oh.”
“Precisely. Some things carry
between High Magic and Wild, and that is a book of illusions. It shapes its
diagrams for the understanding of the reader.”
The woman gave a short, sharp
nod, still staring at the book. “Take him, then,” she said. “But
do not return when he proves too much to handle. He’s your problem
now.”
Tyryn looked back and forth between
the stranger and his mother. He was being taken away? Away from his mother,
away from his bullies… Off with this strange man, who saw power in him?
For the first time in a long time,
he smiled.
* * *
Eight years later…
“Herbs?” Tyryn asked,
tossing down his notebook in irritation. “Vilnus expects us to memorize
herbs?”
“It’s an important part of
being a healer,” Maida chided. “Father said he would drill us on his
return.”
Tyryn scoffed. “I’m not a
healer. I don’t know why I should waste my time on this nonsense–I should
be studying real spells, real magic!”
Maida sighed. “This is
real magic. Healing is important! It’s where most of our money comes
from!”
Tyryn rolled his eyes. Healing
people didn’t get you anywhere. A few coins, some pitiful words of
gratitude, but not real power. Healing couldn’t stop a sword, or better
yet turn it on its wielder. Oh, sure, you could make demands on people who
needed healing, but you had to wait until they needed it. There were
better ways to make people do what you wanted–and that was the only power that
mattered. Unfortunately Vilnus and his daughter were too stupid to see
that–they were content to live in this piddling little village and do piddling
little errands.
“You’re woolgathering
again,” said Maida. “Come, help me study.” She passed him her
notebook. “Go on, drill me!”
Wish I could, thought Tyryn. He’d never met Maida’s mother–she’d died
a year before Vilnus brought Tyryn from Yr to this tower in a remote
corner of Mercia–but clearly she’d been one of the Sea People. Maida had
the deep dark eyes, the tan skin of the Sea People, but the petite build and
delicate features of a Lemurian. He tried to hide that he was watching her as
she flicked a strand of her hip-length straight hair out of her face, but she
had to see him, if not this time then one of the other countless times.
He knew she had to know, had to be
deliberately taunting him with what he couldn’t have. The possibility that she
thought of him as a brother, that she genuinely was oblivious to his unstated
desires, never even occurred to him. Of course she knew, she had to
know. By rights she belonged to him, and it was only her stubbornness that made
her ignore him.
But not for long. Tyryn suppressed a
thin smile as he named herbs and asked Maida to describe their appearances and
uses. He was ready, after four days of practice. Tonight he made his move.
He’d known there had to be something
he could use in the library–a fancy name for the room at the top of the tower
where Vilnus kept his small collection of scrolls and notebooks, most of them
made by his own hand. But ever since he’d learned to read the spells within, to
feel the power coming from them, Tyryn had taken every chance to sneak in and
try to find something he could use. Something that would give him real
power.
And finally, the day Vilnus left on
his latest trip–off to heal some member of the royal court in the capital,
something about a blood disease–Tyryn had found it. It was a spell intended to
hold a patient’s body, manipulate it as needed for healing. But over the last
few days, experimenting with the rats in the tower’s cellars, Tyryn had
realized just how much it could do.
“Tyryn!” Maida scowled at
him. “Pay attention, we need the practice! Father’s already been gone four
days, who knows when he’ll be back?”
Tyryn returned her scowl, then
picked up the notebook and began to question her.
* * *
That night, Tyryn lay back in his
bed and contemplated a handful of long, dark hairs he’d pulled from Maida’s
hairbrush. It should be more than enough for what he had in mind.
He closed his eyes and concentrated.
Slowly a mental picture of Maida formed. She sat in her chamber, studying by
candlelight, of course. It made Tyryn furious: he was more powerful than her by
far, yet from the moment he arrived, she’d been able to do things he couldn’t.
Which of course she could, she’d grown up with Vilnus teaching her! But
she just kept studying and studying, every day, pulling ever farther ahead
while he had to play catch-up.
Oh, she claimed to just enjoy it, to
be satisfying her curiosity, but to Tyryn it was clear that she was really just
working to stay ahead, because she knew he was more powerful. She knew
her head start gave her an unfair advantage, and she intended to maintain it as
long as possible.
But now he had an answer to that.
Slowly he inserted himself into the flow of energy within her body. He had to
be careful–she was a skilled healer, and who knew what she might do if she
noticed something was wrong before he was ready?
It took perhaps ten minutes of
careful, gentle infiltration until he had what felt like a firm grip. She
wasn’t actually that much more complex that a rat, to Tyryn’s amusement. Oh,
there was the complex swirl of energies inside her head, far more intricate and
energetic than a rat’s, but he didn’t intend to touch that. Her body, on the
other hand, was larger and differently proportioned, but still flowed in much
the same way as his practice rats.
The important thing was to keep her
distracted, and Tyryn had ideas on how to accomplish that. He sent a ripple
cascading out across her skin, and grinned when she shivered.
Maida’s eyes fluttered closed as she
leaned back in her chair and sighed dreamily, relaxation and pleasure spreading
through her body like waves. Her hand drifted downward, seemingly of its own
accord–she had no idea, no suspicion, that someone else was moving it as it
dropped down to her skirt and pressed between her thighs.
But then she tried to move it back
and resume her studying, and it didn’t obey. Her eyes snapped open, wide and
panicked, as she struggled to pull her hand away.
Watching from his own room, Tyryn grinned
savagely. He needed to hurry before she calmed down and figured it out, but
that just made it more exciting, more fun. He made Maida stand, and her
breathing grew harsh and rapid as the fear spread.
“Stop!” she shouted, or
tried to, but he clamped her mouth shut and it came out strangled and muffled.
She fought to control her limbs, helpless as her legs walked her toward the bed
and her fingers began to unlace her collar. Her simple dress soon pooled on the
floor around her ankles and she stepped out of it.
“Stoooop!” she moaned
again through her closed teeth, but there was no way Tyryn was going to stop.
He could see her now, naked and defenseless, and it was everything he had hoped
for. She was beautiful, her skin a flawless, smooth light brown, her breasts
full, perfect mounds capped with darker-brown aureolae and nipples. He imagined
running his hands over her hips and ass, feeling the curves he was now seeing
for the first time.
Soon, he thought, but not yet. There was no time, this
first time, and anyway he needed to prepare her further, first.
Maida’s struggles to move, to regain
control of her body, were interrupted by another step toward the bed. She lay
down in it, and her hands ran slowly up her torso to cup her breasts. She’d
done that before, of course–but the fact that she wasn’t controlling her
hands, wasn’t already half-expecting the sensation before it happened, made it
feel stronger, and she gasped.
Watching, Tyryn saw the little burst
of pleasure with the energy streams of her body, and made it happen again.
Maida moaned, her struggles against his control momentarily ceasing, and he
watched as the flow dripped inward and downward to her pussy.
“No…” Maida pleaded as
her hand traced back down over her belly and through the little triangle of
curly black hair below. But she didn’t fight it–she’d come to realize that was
pointless. What is happening to me? she thought.
Then her fingers slipped into her
increasingly slick, hot slit, and her thoughts scattered. Tyryn saw the
reaction and copied it, working to intensify her pleasure and arousal even
while he made her fingers stroke and explore.
Maida arched her back, eyes tightly
shut once again, as the pleasure grew. “Please–” she gasped. She
tried to pull her hand out and couldn’t–but she did seem to be
regaining some control. She could move her fingers as she pleased.
For a moment she hesitated. But the
growing tightness inside of her, the melting warm emptiness, was making its own
demands, and if she couldn’t remove her hand anyway… She began to play with
himself.
Tyryn repressed a victory cry. He
couldn’t be sure Maida wouldn’t hear it, after all. Instead he worked on
amplifying the pleasure she received from touching herself. Gradually he
relaxed all control of her movement, and focused on just making her feel as
good as possible as she played with herself.
He watched the flow of energies
spiral inside of her, a vortex centered on a point just inside and above her
pussy, growing gradually tighter and more intense until it just… burst,
flowing outward in waves of bliss. Maida cried out, and then went limp,
breathing heavily.
Tyryn slowly withdrew the tendrils
of his control, thoroughly satisfied. He did not stay to watch as she began to
cry.